Western Orchid
by happilyinsane13
Summary: It's like fate when Ran shows up at Heiji's door, sick of the lies she's been fed. On the run from the Black Organization, complications arise between them. Separated into three parts.
1. Prediction

Blood. Blood was everywhere, surrounding Ran in a pool of thick sticky liquid.

It smelled like copper and salt, burning her nose as it flared at the unwelcomed stench. Across from her stood a man, his face shrouded in darkness, and his silhouette somehow clear on the blood that now pooled around her feet.

He was laughing, a maniac laughing that seemed sickeningly filled with joy and sorrow.

"Who is it?" she demanded, her voice braver then she felt. "Show yourself."

The man laughed harder, clutching his sides, as if he had been told the funniest joke in the world.

"Oh Ran," he said, chuckling as his laughter died down. "You crack me up! You kill me!" He clutched a hand over his chest, as his insane smile grew. His brilliantly white teeth gleaming through the darkness.

The awful stench grew and Ran felt feint as the man pulled his hand away.

Blood dripped from his dark hand and seeped through his green shirt, staining it a rusty brown and red. He started laughing again, bringing his head down to stare at his hand.

Ran waded through the now ankle deep substance, trembling with fright.

"Sir?" She asked, almost uncertainly.

"Oh, you just kill me," he chuckled. He raised his head, and familiar eyes stared into her's, and his face came into light.

"Who knew how literally, huh, neechan?"

A shining switchblade suddenly appeared into his left hand, and he raised it over his own heart. "Don't worry," he purred soothingly. "This blood of mine will wash away," tears flowed from his eyes filled with madness, "and it won't matter once were both dead." Like a flash the knife delved down, and dug down into his chest and imbedded itself into his heart as she screamed.

"Heiji!"

Then Ran woke up.


	2. Running from Everything

The world around him was black. Heiji couldn't see, couldn't sense the environment around him. Nothingness surrounded him.

He looked around desperately for anyone, anything. His usually calculating, calm brain could not handle this feeling of solidarity. Being alone was something Heiji had never been fond of.

The sound of footsteps approached him, uneven but light, as if they were walking through water puddles on a rainy day. Thin, white legs came into his view first.

"Kazuha?"

But as the figure emerged fully under a light Heiji could not explain within that darkness, he realized it wasn't Kazuha. Mouri Ran stood in front of him, completely naked except for the one long, white cotton shirt, low enough to cover her thighs.

"N-neechan!" Heiji exclaimed.

Ran smiled at first, despite Heiji's embarrassment, but suddenly her face grimaced, and she clutched at a suddenly round stomach. A piercing scream filled his ears, as Ran grabbed at her middle, her lungs bursting with a never-ending flow of air and shrills. Heiji noticed the blood coursing down, thicker and thicker, from in between her legs.

It was only when Ran fell to the floor and stopped screaming that Heiji could move his body. His feet splashed across the surface, and he slid in front of Ran's motionless body. She only twitched momentarily. She had gone into shock.

"Neechan! Wake up! Neechan!"

He had grabbed her by the shoulder, hoisting her into his lap. It was then he noticed a sudden spring of blood blooming on Ran's shirt, above her chest. It was as if an invisible person had stabbed her.

Heiji felt his hands begin to slip, and looking around him he realized the splashing of their feet had not been them walking on water, but on blood. Warm and sticky, it stained his jeans, and made his bare feet slip. Ran's shirt was increasingly becoming stained, and her breathing had shallowed.

Heiji's eyes were wide with horror. Why was this happening? Why couldn't he act? He had seen many gruesome corpses, so why couldn't he handle this gruesome scene among two living people? One of which, was dying.

As if she had heard his thought, projected into that dark space, she uttered,

"Three people… we will be, three people, Heiji-kun."

Heiji looked towards to Ran's peculiarly round stomach, Kudo's child? He couldn't let this happen, why was this happening?

"Neechan! Hold on, I'll get Kudo! You have to hold on!"

But Ran couldn't hear him anymore. Her breathing had stopped. The blood was pooling around him, never ending, rising to meet his ankles and surround him with something akin to guilt.

"NEECHAN!"

And Heiji cried, clutching the dead body that had been Ran and a child, choking on the blood as the darkness consumed him.

Heiji couldn't get that dream out of his head for weeks. He told no one, not even Kazuha. He clutched onto his mamori at night, as if it could keep that nightmare at bay.

When he began to put it in the back of his mind, someone knocked on his door.

Ran stood there, a bag slung over her shoulder, her eyes downcast.

When Heiji asked why she was here, and where was her father and Conan, she replied,

"I can't lie to myself anymore and for the time being, I can't stand his lies anymore. I know he can't tell me," she looked up at him with determination in her eyes. "But you can."

Heiji knew then and there it was going to be a mistake, but despite his gut clenching and twisting inside him he took her in, and told her everything.

It was her third day there that it happened. His parents had no choice to except his lame excuse for her appearance, and he had not told Kazuha anything. It was all too complicated. But it became even worse when Heiji heard the sound of gun fire from the guest room, right next to his own.

Rushing to the scene he saw Ran clutching her shoulder in pain, looking up with terrified eyes at a man all in black. Heiji rushed at the man the same time Ran made the effort to use her good arm to lift her lower body up and kick the man in the groin. The simultaneous attack allowed the pair to detain the man and hand cuff him to the shoji door, ripping a whole in the rice paper. Heiji made a split decision as he heard his parents frantic footsteps approach the room.

"I can't stay here," Ran said, grabbing her bag and stuffing her clothes inside.

"Correction," Heiji said, gently but firmly grabbing her good arm and pulling her aside. "We can't stay here."

Frantically Heiji dashed to his room to grab a duffle bag, only having enough time to stuff his wallet, kendo stick, cell phone, a shirt and pants, and the gun his father had taught him to shoot inside. Grabbing an extra pair of shoes and his motorcycle keys, Heiji ran back to Ran, and propelled them as safely as he could out the window. He knew he hardly had enough time to make him and Ran disappear before his parents resounding footsteps made it from the other side of the family compound.

When they reached the motorcycle, Heiji settled Ran on the back, placed his duffel bag between them and sat himself in the front. There was no time for helmets.

"Hold on tight, I know it hurts, but bear with it until we reach a hospital,"

"Heiji, I'm feeling dizzy."

Heiji cursed himself. Of course, she was losing blood, why hadn't he bothered to make a tourniquet? But there was no time, more men after her life could be coming soon.

"Neechan, press the wound tightly against my shoulder, we have no time to stop until we're as far from here as is safe."

She did as she was told, and from there Heiji revved the engine and took off. Although Heiji knew it wasn't good for Ran's shoulder, he had no choice but to drive to a hospital twenty minutes away. The one-way streets of Osaka, didn't help.

The doctors immediately went to work on Ran's shoulder, but when it came time perform surgery, a guardian signature was needed. Heiji had no choice but to lie.

"She's my wife," he blurted, fighting a furious blush rising to his cheeks. The nurse accompanying the doctor raised her eyebrow, but the doctor, to Heiji's relief, paid no heed and just hurried him to sign the papers.

As Heiji waited for Ran's surgery his father called.

"Heiji, what the hell just happened?"

"I can't explain, but that man attacked Ran. He's from the Black Organization, but I swear that's all I can tell you. You won't… you won't see Ran and I for awhile."

"What? Heiji! HEIJI!"

But Heiji hung up and turned his phone off. Grasping his head in his hands, he waited, the nightmare from before haunting him.

Months later and Heiji and Ran were living in hiding. On the tiny, isolated island of Yoron, in an even tinier apartment. Away from their loved ones, they only occasionally took calls on their cell phones, which always seemed to devolve into crying and yelling. Not once did they reveal their location.

"When are you coming home?" Kazuha would weep angrily.

"When I know Ran will be safe." Heiji would say, even though he knew how much it hurt Kazuha to hear him say it.

"When can I come home?" Ran would ask Conan, little Shinichi, dully – no life in her voice.

"When I know I can protect you, when I know you will be safe." Shinichi would reply fervently.

Ran worked at a small restaurant as a waitress by the sea. It was the one thing that cheered her up, watching the beautiful clear, blue ocean swaying, as if waving to her. In her mind it was like goodwill messages from the mainland.

Heiji helped the local fishermen, breaking his back under the hot summer sun. As time passed by, those months they lived together and worked to support each other, he would look to the island from the sea, squinting to see if he could spot Ran from her restaurant. He liked the feeling of watching that spot when he wasn't working until he came home and she would say,

"Okaeri."

But still there were days of complete silence between them, those days where Ran wanted to be back in school with Sonoko, gossiping and laughing. She wanted to be at karate practice or eating with her father and "Conan". There were still times where she couldn't separate Conan and Shinichi in her mind, making the separation that much harder.

Heiji would get bored, itching to exercise his brain. For once murder weren't following him around, not on this small island. He wanted a challenge, something to solve, an excuse to serve justice… But this was becoming increasingly unlikely with every passing day. This, more than anything, was frustrating to him.

One evening after dinner they sat in front of their small TV as a crime drama came on. Watching the mystery unfold in front of him, at first it delighted Heiji to solve the possible along with the detective, but Ran noticed ever so increasingly the irritation growing on Heiji's face until finally he exploded.

"I want to be out there! I can't stand this waiting, I want to use my brain! Why are we sitting around here? I don't understand!"

There was a thick silence until Ran spoke, her voice trembling,

"I don't understand either, Heiji-kun, I wish I did… I'm so sorry. You shouldn't of come here, I should've made you leave months ago… Leave. Please leave!"

"No, neechan I'm… I'm sorry. Calm down, shhhhhhh. I was just frustrated. Calm down."

Heiji came to kneel in front of her, his hands automatically reached out to wipe away her tears like so many times before. After talking with Kudo, when a tourist at work had reminded her of her mother, and all the little things in between that kept adding up to this moment.

In Heiji's mind's eye he saw the first time they were brave enough to go down to the beach and actually relax. They made a small sand castle and sat in the shallow end of that beautiful water, just talking about nothing. The time they went shopping at the grocery store and the old grandma from across the street thought they were married. They never denied it. They were just the newlywed couple who had moved from the mainland.

That time in the kitchen he had cut his finger and she had bandaged it, saying she was used to these sort of things. The day she had come to bring him lunch while he was fishing, and because she had gotten impatient she had hoisted the bento above her head and waded out into the water until he came in to meet her. When she had gotten sick at work and he had to taker her home, and that night where he thought, absentmindedly, she was pretty sleeping in her bed as he closed the window, stopping the wind from making her hair flutter.

It all added up to this moment where suddenly he was on her, kissing her senseless. When he withdrew he was confident she would slap him. Yet when she wrapped her thin arms around his neck and kissed him back he rejoiced. Lifting her in his arms he carried her away to her bed.

She stared at the little stick in a mixture of shock and horror. That stupid little stick with pee on it that changed her fate forever. She dropped to her knees to the bathroom floor and cried. Heiji would leave her now.

The first person she told was actually her boss at the restaurant. He was a gruff looking man in his mid-40's, thinning, wispy black hair, sharp brown eyes, a thick black beard, all of this set on a large body with calloused tan skins, the sign that he had been a sailor. He just stared at her for a bit as she waited for his advice. He just shook his head, and admitted a rough chuckle.

"You're scared Heiji-kun will leave you because of an unplanned pregnancy?"

"Well, yes," Ran said nervously.

"He's your husband, isn't he?"

"Yes," Ran lied. It had become natural to say Heiji was her husband.

"Then you're fine," he huffed. "That man loves you more than he loves those puzzles he likes to solve on his days off."

He left Ran curiously more anxious than before.

Heiji didn't move for a second. He knew this delay of action was what brought the tears to Ran's eyes.

"I knew it," she muttered. "You don't want the baby…"

She made to rush out of the apartment, but Heiji quickly stopped her, wrapping his strong arms gently around her stomach.

"I want this baby,"

"We're too young,"

"We've got all the time in the world now, we have jobs,"

"We're in hiding!"

"I know," Heiji rubbed her flat stomach gently, still bewildered that there was a living being growing inside of it. "And maybe it's selfish, but maybe we've been blessed to have a child before we're caught."

With that Heiji turned her around and kissed her, and Ran wasn't as scared anymore.

Four months later Ran's stomach had grown, and Heiji had filled up with a pride that had briefly covered up his need for a challenge. One day as he was showing a sonogram of his child-to-be-born to his fellow fishermen, he heard a terrified scream. They turned in their small craft to a yacht nearby, and a terrified woman, most likely a tourist, pointing at a floating body in the water. Heiji, to his inner horror, actually grinned.

He had it. A real puzzle to solve.


End file.
